CS Colloquium

Date: 7.5.2025

Time: 14:00-15:00

Title: From Standardization to Theory and Back

Abstract: 

Graph databases are becoming increasingly popular due to their natural data modeling, making them useful in expressing connections that are harder to express in the relational model. Indeed, graph databases are used in a plethora of domains ranging from social to biological networks, and for various use-cases including fraud detection and investigating journalism. Since 2019, GQL (Graph Query Language) is being developed under the auspices of ISO as the new standard for querying graph databases, akin to SQL for relational databases. In this talk, I will present a researcher’s digest of GQL by describing its underlying theoretical model. I will demonstrate how we can use tools from formal language and automata theory to show the limitations of this new standard, which can hint at extensions for its next versions.

This talk is based on recent papers with Nadime Francis, Amélie Gheerbrant, Paolo Guagliardo, Leonid Libkin, Victor Marsault , Wim Martens, Filip Murlak,  Alexandra Rogova, and Domagoj Vrgoç.